The Coming Weekend

I managed to get myself on some panels at LibertyCon this coming weekend. I am feeling a strong dose of imposter syndrome for it, as one of the panels I am to participate in is with Dave Drake and John Ringo, two of the biggest stars of my SF-reading universe. In fact, I have been a fan of Dave's work since I was fifteen, and John's fan for about 15 years...So yeah, big moment for me. I am doubly lucky in that I know both gentlemen, and get on well with them.

Chuck Gannon and my co-author Eric Flint will be there, as well as the rest of the 1632 crew, among them many other friends and fond acquaintances.

I will also get a chance to see my oldest friend, Kyle, whom I have not seen in about five years. He will also come out to see my parents outside Chattanooga, the first time he's seen them since we were 16 or so.

So, yeah, big week coming up for me. Hope I don't screw up.

What I've Been Doing This Summer

Work has been the same, meaning there have been moments where I wanted to unleash my inner gorilla, but, in general, proceeding in as efficient a manner as possible. I have a long (15000 words, more or less) short story entitled A Separate Law I am under contract to produce. I am writing it in 1500-word stretches for placement on a web magazine supporting a computer game. I'm nearly done with it, finishing up the eighth bit right now. When I am, I will resume working on 1636: The Mughal Mission, with Eric Flint. I might think about something more with the games company, but I really, really want to get my novels out there, and working with Flint is a godsend as far as graduating from apprentice to journeyman writing. He's highly skilled at getting the best out of writers he works with, and I hope to learn a great deal.

THE MIDNIGHT COURT

The holiday weekend was quite a productive one for writing, I managed to complete the first, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth draft of THE MIDNIGHT COURT.

The short story is not terribly long at just under 6500 words, but it is the first of what I hope will be a serial that leads to other cool things. Best thing about it: I was asked to write as a sort of proof of concept for the Grantville Gazette. I was given guidelines, the historical figures I should focus on and then set loose.

Special permission and mandate in hand, I went to work.

One thing about Eric Flint's 1632: it's rigorously researched, and people will catch you slipping if you do. Knowing this, I was a bit daunted.  I had to do a great deal of study and research before I could even write word one. Every other thing I have previously written or tried to write involved the use of knowledge I already possessed or things I made up from whole cloth. I had a great deal of research on historical figures from a culture and religion alien to me and anything I had studied before.

It wasn't all drudgery: I have always loved history and learning of times and places I have no experience of, so the research had its pleasing moments, but I did cram reading about 3000 pages of different history texts and biographies into my brain over the course of about a month and a half.

About half-way through the research I started to figure out where I was going, and how to get there.

Then, about two weeks ago, I sat down and started to actually write.

I think it came out well.

Initial feedback was pretty good, though I did get caught on an error: did you know that arab warmblood horses have only been around for a hundred years or so? Arab horses were awesome then, but the sub-breed of warmbloods hadn't been created.

Now, I wait for further word from the editorial board.

Excited.

Fingers crossed.

BANK ON IT! SOLD!

The short story I wrote for Eric Flint's 1632 e-magazine, The Grantville Gazette, has been accepted for publication. The story is titled Bank On It, a teaser for which is now up on the website.

I am blown away by how quickly things moved on this. It took a while to finish the story, if only because my knowledge of chemistry was not sufficient to move the plot along. But I finished it two weeks ago and now it's a done deal.

I am over the moon that this has happened. It's no novel, but it is getting paid for the written product of my mind, something I've wanted since I was 10 years old and first understood where all the books I loved came from. While I've been published for game modules and adventures, this is fiction, flat out, and that's a whole 'nother level of process.

I am very blessed to have friends who gave encouragement and guidance, for me as an individual and for the story in particular.  Thanks to: Chuck, Mark, Rob, Rick, Alistair, and most especially Alan, who, a few years ago, saw that a beat man might have more skills than those necessary to walk a beat. It was you that gave me that first glimmer of hope, that first spark of confidence. Thank you.

I hope you will read and enjoy the tale, and hope to write many more that see publication.